I received this unsolicited commercial email asking me to renew a domain that I'd already renewed! The company wanted $79.95 to renew a .com domain name! Of course, I had already renewed it for less than 10% of that price – with my REAL registrar. Companies like this provide me with a constant source of entertainment.

auDA is the policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain space. Its Annual General Meeting is to be held on 19 October 2009. The AGM will elect four directors to the board and I (Simon Johnson) have been nominated to stand for election by the Demand class members. In order to vote, you

Top Level Domain Holdings, Ltd has completed its merger with Minds & Machines, a leading registry services provider for web-based top-level domains. The merger follows TLDH?s 2.5M pound private capital raising (approximately US $4.1 million). For more information visit Kikabink News.

Tucows, Inc. (TCX) is commencing a ?Dutch auction? tender offer to repurchase up to 5 million shares of its common stock.

Dynadot: "Effective immediately, if an auction order is not paid, our system will automatically ban the user from participating in any future auctions." Snapnames: "auctions for domainster.com and fullsize.com will be run again".

This afternoon I received an email from auDA requesting comment on their Domain Expiry, Renewal and Deletion Policy. auDA has specifically asked for comments around: 1. Whether the current 30 day pending delete period for expired domain names (ie. where the registrant has not renewed their domain name) is appropriate. 2. Whether the current ?domain...

Popular Australian bargain site, ozbargain.com.au has been typosquatted. That's right – if you visit ozbargin.com.au (note that its missing an "a") right now, the website diverts to eBay. auDA has a "Prohibition on Misspellings Policy (2008-09)" which specifically states under section 4 "Scope of Prohibition": "4.1 The prohibition on misspe...

Detectives from the New Jersey State Police Cyber Crimes Unit have charged Daniel Goncalves relating to the theft of P2P.com.

I wrote this guide to expired domains a few years ago, in order to help newcomers to the domaining industry. Given I'm still getting questions via email and posts on forums, I thought I'd post it up on Domainer Income. Hope it helps. Purchasing A Domain Name Anyone can register a domain name. The person or entity

IAC (NASDAQ: IACI) announced that it has signed an agreement to acquire People Media from American Capital Ltd (NASDAQ: ACAS).

Its been reported that a woman in the UK has become the first person to change her name by Deed Poll to a domain name. 24 year old Claire Forshaw changed her name earlier this week to Princess-Rainbow.com. ?I knew that if ever I got the chance I would change [my name] to a web domain,

Where do you draw the line between registering a domain name to mourn or honor an individual, vs profit from their death? Since MJ died, there have been 3,459 .com domain names registered with the word "michael" in them. Don't believe me? Well, here is the list I compiled (please give me credit if you use

As we suspected, ICANN has hired Rod Beckstrom as its new CEO. If you look at the House of Reps grilling of ICANN, there was an underlying theme of "security", so this appointment doesn't exactly come as a shock. Beckstrom spent less than 12 months in the Department of Homeland Security, where he was the Director of

Its been reported that Former Green Bay Packers lineman, Tony Mandarich, allegedly posted up a website under his ex-fianc?e?s name. The site apparently features lewd content including sexually explicit videos and pictures of the woman. The unintended star of the site, Sharra Ferbrache, brought her case to court in Maricopa County, claiming the cont...

Kentucky lawyers filed briefs with the state Supreme Court regarding the online gambling forfeiture case, where 141 online casinos were allegedly "attacked" in the initial order. Questions by the court arose when attorneys representing the Commonwealth of Kentucky filed a late response to the Internet Casino case. The Motion for Enlargement which w...

The U.S. House Of Representatives Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet recently met to examine issues related to ICANN, including the expiring JPA (Joint Project Agreement) between the Department of Commerce and ICANN, as well as ICANN's proposed introduction of new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs). What Happened? It was qu...

I was reading this article around TheInternetCompany, selling the domain name ?wealth.com? at a private auction run by Sedo. They want 2.9M and the VP was quoted as saying "we believe that now is the right time to monetize this asset and that an auction, rather than a traditional sale, is the best strategy". For the

Just 24 hours after the launch of the facebook vanity URL, we are seeing people starting to sell. biggestlooser - $8,000 rebate - $60,000 tonightshow - $15,000 sexvideo - $17,000 All these names are available at assetize.com, a site for buying and selling accounts including Facebook, Twitter, GMail and Wordpress. People seem to be buying account...

Mashable is reporting that 500,000 usernames were registered in 15 mins. Well I happened to be watching the clock tick down, and acquired the keyword "domainer". Feel free to get in contact. To be honest, I really didn't think this would be as big as it was. Within minutes I had people sending me friend invites….

The Comite Interprofessional du Vin de Champagne (the semi-government authority of the Republic of France), is going after people who use champagne in their domain name. A gift delivery business called ?Champagne Messenger? has been forced to change their name after being pursued by our frog eating friends. The CIVC claims their intent is to protec...

For the last two years, bodog.com has apparently been battling a legal issue which has kept them from operating under their original domain name and allowing gamers to gamble there. The good news is that a settlement been reached, resolving the patent pending litigation. The result is the return of Bododg.com. CEO of Morris Mohawk Gaming

According to Future Laboratory and Gandi.net, most (two thirds) of web users feel that a .anything domain will infiltrate the web with futile domain names such as .god. Since ICANN made the announcement last October that would allow any organization in 2012 with $185,000 to apply for a generic domain?speculation has stirred the internet community. ...

An appeal from the US District Court was recently lodged in California. The Plaintiff is the Coalition for ICANN Transparency with the Defendant, Verisign, Inc. Here is a small extract that I found interesting: "CFIT alleged that in order to get ICANN to agree to the terms VeriSign desired, VeriSign paid lobbyists to support its position, ?stacked?...

ICANN has allowed .biz domain registry NeuStar to grant 1 and 2 character second-level .biz domain names. The domains will be available via an RFP process, with any ungranted domains available via auction. For more details, check out this article in Kikabink News.

The nation of Iraq may make a leap into the Internet community with the extension .iq. Iraqi chairman of The National Communications & Media Commission (Siyamend Othmend) said the domain name would allow Iraqis to ?stake a virtual flag? in the world of the Web. The chairman also stated in a letter to ICANN, ?It is

This is the live video webcast of the ICANN hearing. Check it out NOW.

I wanted to draw your attention to ICANNs "truly independent economic study" of the proposed new TLD's. For those reading this, we are going to play a game. When you see the word "independent", substitute that for the words "seriously conflicted, ICANN sponsored propaganda, marketing piece". Ok, lets go…. ICANN allegedly commissioned these t...

Due to the recent downturn in the American economy, many are losing their homes and tightening their spending. But some businesses seem to be benefiting from the bad breaks. Eltman, Eltman & Cooper are bringing in the bucks by bringing in debtors. With a team of retired New York City law enforcement officers. ?A judgment is

For a mere $25,000 (US dollars) you can be the proud owner of one website domain named susanboyle.com The British singer is perhaps a bit peeved with the confusion that surrounds when a fan is misdirected to a site owned by American artist Susan K. Boyle. The ?Britain?s Got Talent? star is an unlikely diva, with

Depending on the type of education you desire?you may be put off by the porno site Naughty American University. When seeking a bachelor?s or master?s degree, some would be students are stumbling upon the explicit site where sex-ed is the subject. National American University is suing NAU (Naughty American University) for claims of trademark violati...

Mel Gibson?s newly announced pregnant girlfriend is suing. The trouble, however, does not sit with Mel, rather a company called DreamHost.com. The company is accused of making OksanaGrigorieva.com look like her official website. The lawsuit was apparently filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the compliant suggests the Web hosting company was cyber ...

When it comes to managing a large portfolio you really need to cut down on maintenance tasks. For that reason I usually renew my domains across multiple years. I also try to have a bunch of them renewing at the same time. It's Friday night and what am I doing? Renewing a few names of course!

I was just paying for an auction I'd won at tdnam and went in search of some coupons. Here is a list of what works right now and what discount it got me. Hopefully it can save you some $$$ and time. gdbb776 - .com domain went from $10.69 to $7.50. best3 - .com went from $10.69

I just received this email about the May auction and I have to say, I was not impressed. If you want domainers to buy at auction, are you really going to open up your email with this sentence: "With a new wave of college graduates entering the workforce, now is the perfect time to acquire a

Given the state of the auto industry in the USA, are you surprised that GM has registered gmrestructuring.com? While the GM website is currently blank, Chryslers one at chryslerrestructuring.com is full of Chapter 11 bedtime reading. I know what all you TM domainers are thinking: insert-acronym+restructuring.com. Evil people. Could this be the star...

Hi, I'm Simon and I have a problem. Its been 10 days since my last blog post and I've got a confession. I have relapsed and went back to reading Domaining blogs! I know what you are thinking…. how could he do this? It's betrayal of the highest order! But you know what? I've discovered something….

For those that missed the live auction at Traffic ( like me ), the Extended Auction is a great opportunity to bid on a few names. I've been closely watching a few of them and its coming down to the wire. Here are a few interesting names across multiple price ranges, that I've hand picked. zeel.com -

ad.com sold for US$1.4M - was that too cheap? Here is the official list of domains and their sale prices. Ad.com $1,400,000.00 BottledWater.com $45,000.00 Athletic.com $40,000.00 Vixen.com $32,500.00 Shutter.com $25,000.00 Diets.net $21,000.00 NonProfits.com $20,000.00 OnlineTelevision.com $20,000.00 Jonesboro.com $19,000.00 SteakKnives.com $18,000...

While eating my hot cross buns this morning I received an email from Snapnames support. It seems that 4 months ago I won a domain at auction and did not receive the credentials from the registrar, Directi. This wasn't a pro-active step on the part of Directi or Snapnames; I had contacted Snapnames after winning the